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America’s “First Lady of Environmental Justice” aims to help Ohio families out of toxic nightmare Mom from Love Canal fame launches pilot project to help local residents make their neighborhoods clean and safe again (Athens) Lois Gibbs, the stay-at-home mom turned environmental crusader who helped rescue her neighborhood from the notorious Love Canal toxic waste dump, wants Ohio to be a staging ground to help make America’s polluted neighborhoods clean and safe again. And she’s taking her fight to some of the very areas hardest hit by dangerous toxic pollution: Southeast Ohio’s small towns, rural farms, working class neighborhoods and communities of color. “Too many families in America are living a toxic nightmare,” said Gibbs, founder and director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice near Washington, D.C. The goal of the forums is to inventory problems and identify solutions for families hit hard by toxic emissions and odors from smokestacks of coal power plants, nuclear plants, chemical factories and other high-pollution operations. To gather this information, project organizers are targeting a natural source: community residents who live next to such industrial facilities. “We want to talk with real people about the real challenges they face everyday living with this toxic burden,” said Gibbs. “Challenges like illness, school and work absenteeism, and stagnant economic development. We want a citizen-driven effort that generates real ideas on how to fix this problem. I can’t think of a better place to start looking for that than Southeast Ohio.” Gibbs and her Center for Health, Environment and Justice chose Ohio for the environmental justice project because of Ohioans’ exposure to toxic emissions. According to preliminary data reported by industry to the U.S. EPA, industrial facilities emitted more than 126 million pounds of acid gases, lead, mercury and other poisonous air toxics in Ohio in 2005—most in the nation. The data is still in draft form but is expected to be finalized soon, according to EPA sources. According to a 2005 study by the Associated Press, U.S. EPA data revealed that Ohioans suffer the highest risk of long-term health risks from exposure to industrial air pollution. The AP study reported that 26 of the nation’s 200 most at-risk neighborhoods are in Ohio, including the nation’s single most vulnerable neighborhood, near Marietta, Ohio. The AP analyzed federal pollution, health and census data for the study. The U.S. EPA has designated three neighborhoods in Ohio as potential or probable environmental justice communities: one surrounded by a heavily polluted area of Cincinnati know locally as the “toxic doughnut,” one surrounding the WTI hazardous waste incinerator (the largest such facility in the country) in East Liverpool, and the village of Cheshire, Ohio, adjacent to the AEP Gavin power plant. The local relevance of this to Southeast Ohio is stunning. Workers and neighbors in Pike and Scioto Counties have suffered devastating health and environmental effects from nearly 50 years of "Cold War" and other nuclear operations at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon. Area residents are now fighting to demand a clean-up of the site and to stop a federal plan to bring all of the nation's high-level, radioactive spent fuel to Piketon for storage. Meanwhile, residents of Washington County are battling Eramet, a French-owned metallurgical company that emits odors and heavy metal particulates and is one of the biggest polluters in the United States. Neighbors in Meigs County are uniting in response to the energy industry’s threat to transition their community into the largest concentration of coal-fired power plants anywhere in the United States (four existing and five proposed in an approximate ten-mile radius). They have banded together to create a sustainable future and to fight the expansion of polluting technologies as well as forty years of proposed mining, coal processing, and waste injection that undermine the integrity of their health and environment. In Gallia County, Cheshire residents were coerced into selling the rights to their land and homes to American Electric Power in exchange for agreeing not to sue for their health problems. And Ohio River Valley residents are fighting to make DuPont accountable for dumping C8, a byproduct of making Teflon, into their drinking water. Project organizers hope that the environmental justice forums will yield ideas for a state environmental justice policy. Such a policy would assure meaningful involvement of all Ohio citizens in the development, implementation and enforcement of state environmental laws. According to a 2004 American Bar Association report, 35 states have an official environmental justice program, policy, or statute. Legislation has been introduced in Congress to make enforceable under federal law an executive order issued by President Clinton in 1994. Last year, the U.S. EPA Inspector General issued a scathing report finding that the EPA has failed to conduct environmental reviews of its programs and policies, as required by the executive order.The following organizations are involved in the Ohio environmental justice project: Center for Health, Environment and Justice |
Ohioans for Health, Environment and Justice |
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